My Musical Journey

This is the sixth instalment in a series following my musical journey to the present day. If you're following along, thank you!

Previous Posts in the Series

My Musical Journey - Part 1
My Musical Journey - Part 2
My Musical Journey - Part 3
My Musical Journey - Part 4
My Musical Journey - Part 5

RMMGA

It’s time to tell y’all about RMMGA. It’s rather a strange name for a bunch of guitar nerds, isn’t it? I don’t know how many of you will remember newsgroups. This was in the early Internet days. Newsgroups came before Facebook, before web forums, possibly even before email? I’m not sure about that one, but if not before then around the same time. You would use a news client and it was basically a messaging service where groups of people with similar interests could come together on a particular server. This one was at rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic - RMMGA, get it? I was actually a latecomer to it, having found my way in probably through the Acoustic Guitar magazine’s forum round about 2001. By then the inner circle was fully formed and I hung around the periphery, but it didn’t take long before I was part of the group. Some of the characters on the server were quirky and it was a really fun place to hang out and talk about guitars.

Turns out you can still access the newsgroup of Google Groups. Who knew? RMMGA

Gatherings

Okay, the gatherings. These were annual events and took place in different parts of the world. The ones I know of were in the UK, Texas and East Coast USA. People travelled to visit some or all of these. The UK one is coming up to its 21st in May this year and I don’t think they missed a year, so let’s see… that means the first UK one would’ve been in 1997? Something like that anyway. The first one I went to was in 2005. I had planned on going to the 2004 one, but it coincided with our daughter’s birth!

I flew from Luxembourg to Prestwick in April 2005 and left my wife and daughter at my parents’ for the weekend and drove to Buxton in my parents’ Smart Car. The gathering was in Hargate Hall, an old country estate in Derbyshire with a huge open fire in the main living area and loads of little rooms and nooks and crannies for getting into little groups and jamming. There was also the wall of beer - the cost of the weekend covered all the catering and all the beer, so we were happily ensconced for the whole weekend.

^{RMMGA Comedy Song}

There were some guest musicians booked to play concerts in the evenings and a PA set up for that and open mics and plucky dips – where names are drawn from a hat and impromptu pairings or bands formed to work on a performance piece for the plucky dip open mic. The guest musicians in 2005 were Stuart Ryan and Pete Smith & John Buckley.

This might have been my first performance thinking back on it. I played at Little Brother’s jam in October 2005, so yeah, there’s a good chance that this was my first performance in front of people. I remember George Duff’s handing me a glass of whisky after I played and it was one of the most memorable drams I’ve ever had!

I didn’t have my still camera with me, but I did have my camcorder and I got a lot of footage of the performances that weekend. These are actually my first videos on YouTube!

^{Stuart Ryan in 2005}

^{The fantastic Dave Wood in 2007}

Break

I made three in a row, from 2005-2007 and had the best time, making good friends and learning so much about guitars, music and performance. I shot a lot of video, particularly in 2007, the year that I recorded an audio feed from the console into my iPod and synced the audio up. I printed DVDs of the edit and sent them out to the players and learned a lot through doing that as well.

In 2008 we left Luxembourg for Scotland, and there our lives took a turn for the worse. Such a big mistake, but hey ho - hindsight and all that. The result was that I just couldn’t afford guitar holidays like that any more and I didn’t get back to another gathering until 2016. This time it was in the Cotswolds, at a beautiful country house called Springhill.

^Springhill

This was a kind of reunion for me. Some of the participants have been to every UK gathering and it was an absolute delight to catch up with the ones I knew again. It felt like the eight years since my last gathering were only eight weeks. That’s when you know you’ve made good friends!

^{As far as I know, Guy hasn’t missed a single gathering! - love this guy!}

It was tinged with a little sadness as many of the folks I’d known from the Hargate Hall gatherings had died, including the two organisers, Pete Gay and Chris Rockliffe. Another Scot, Callum had died too and we raised a glass to absent friends late one night.

^{Malcolm Griffiths and Chris Rockliffe at UK8}

^{Dave Wood and Pete Gay at UK8}

The format was very much the same, and why not because it works! The house had more space than the place in Buxton had and it was a delight to get to find little rooms for jamming and spending time with some of the amazing instruments that were there, both owned by players and built by the guest luthiers in attendance.

The 2016 gathering was the year that I was smitten by one of Adrian Lucas’s guitars - a Pavilion Sweep 12-fret in American cherry and spruce. This was a good example of tone trumping aesthetics for me - I really wasn’t that taken with the shape and design of the guitar, but as soon as I tried it, I was like whoa! I kept going back to it over the weekend to see whether I was mistaken about how the tone just sat so well with me, and I wasn’t. So I ended up buying it and it has coaxed new things out of me that I’m sure I wouldn’t have found on another guitar. It’s a absolute delight to play.

^{Me playing Hurt at UK10}

I made the 2017 gathering too, once again at Springhill in the Cotswolds. This time was possibly even better than 2016 because of the connections with new people I’d made in 2016, including the wonderful Dan Burne and his wife Jo. Dan is one of the co-organisers now, along with Charles Dean whom I’ve known since my first gathering. He plays, amongst other things, a couple of Jason Kostal guitars and is a great musical talent.

^{Jo and Dan}

^{Charles Dean - co-organsier with Dan}

This was the year that I got to see Amrit Sond again. I’d seen Amrit at the gathering in 2006 when he was a guest performer, and 10 years later he was guest performer once again!

It was also the year I got to hear Clive Carroll for the first time. Boy oh boy, what a musician. He reminded me a little of Pierre Bensusan in his musicality. Such expression and tone.

Another regular that I love listening to is Tom Doughty. Tom plays lap steel and sings in a bluesy style. I bought a CD off him back in the Hargate Hall years and love it, particularly his song Real Emotional Girl. Check it out. It was great to catch up with him again in 2016.

And let’s not forget the inimitable Mike Dunnigan. I’ve known Mike since my first gathering and not only is he a fabulous musician, he’s also got a wicked sense of humour. I remember sitting by the fireside at Hargate Hall having a lesson from him on how to play stadium rock. It was hilarious.

At UK8 I met Joe Carpenter from Tennessee for the first time. Joe’s biggest influences would be Leo Kottke, Chet Atkins and John Fahey. He and I hit it off right away and I met him again at UK10, and twice in the USA: once at Little Brother’s Jam in Georgia and another time at his home town of Franklin TN. Joe’s a fantastic player and such a lovely guy.

Here he is accompanying me on Rocky Raccoon.

And one of his own, U-Turn Laverne

This year’s gathering is the 21st and it’s in May, but I just can’t afford to make this one and that makes me sad.

The best thing about attending these gatherings is the people. There are few opportunities in life to leave your worries at home and really connect with people for an extended period of time like this. I always come away feeling refreshed and with my faith in humanity somewhat restored. It’s like decompressing.

When I think back on my first few gatherings I remember how welcoming everyone was. I knew there was an ‘inner circle’ on the RMMGA newsgroup and was worried that I wouldn’t fit in, but it wasn’t like that at all. I’ve grown a lot through attending these sorts of things, getting over my fear and shyness to some extent and just enjoying the connections and the music. Every gathering I’ve been to has been like that, whether it be RMMGA or Little Brother’s jams in Georgia USA. I believe that music can unite us in ways that few things can and that’s a powerful thing. Perhaps that’s why it has always meant so much to me. Maybe sharing music in one place is the greatest example of that.

^{Group shot in 2017}